Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
